University of Groningen to Be Read Tastefully and Fruitfully

University of Groningen To Be Read Tastefully and Fruitfully Ramakers, Bart Published in: Petrus Camper in Context IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2015 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Ramakers, B. (2015). To Be Read Tastefully and Fruitfully: Petrus Camper as a Public Scientist. In K. van Berkel, & B. Ramakers (Eds.), Petrus Camper in Context: Science, the Arts, and Society in the Eighteenth- Century Dutch Republic (pp. 153-186). Uitgeverij Verloren. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 26-09-2021 Petrus Camper context Petrus in ‘A meteor of spirit, science, talent and activity’ – thus Goethe described Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Goethe’s words contain all the elements that make Camper such a fascinating figure in the history of science and the arts in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. This volume sheds new light on Camper’s versatility, engagement, and charisma in all fields and disciplines he ventured into and published on. It not only addresses his scientific activities, findings, and opinions, but also delves into his careers at the universities of Franeker, Amsterdam, and Groningen, his travels, relation- ships, friendships, and feuds, as well as the ways he communicated his wide-ranging research. Eleven case studies illustrate Camper’s views on eighteenth-century life and society, which motivated not just his scientific, but also his political, societal, literary, and artistic practice. Together they amount to a plea for an integration of all aspects of his scholarly life and persona. Science, the arts, and society in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic Petrus Camper in context Klaas van Berkel and Bart Ramakers (eds.) Omslag.Camper.5.indd 1 04-08-15 21:12 To be read tastefully and fruitfully Petrus Camper as a public scientist Bart Ramakers Such is today the variety and the extent of the sciences, that it is necessary, in order to profit from them comfortably, to be at the same time a man of letters. In fact, the principles of the sciences would be tedious, if the belles-lettres did not provide them with grace. The truths become more accessible through clarity of style, through cheerful images, and through the ingenious devices through which they are presented to the mind.1 Introduction Petrus Camper’s name and fame as a scientist rested not just on the basis of his scientific findings, but also on the way in which he managed to convey them in speech and writing. Naturally, most learned reputations are constructed through communicating, reporting, or documenting the scientific insights and achievements of the scientists in question, either by themselves or by witness- es, colleagues, relatives, friends, or disciples. In this way, Camper’s reputation after his death was cared for by his son Adriaan Gilles.2 But he had already established it himself during his lifetime, in a large number of articles in great- ly varying journals, publications that derived their meaning as much (if not more) from the manner in which they were formed and formulated – in other words, from their rhetoric – as from their content. The word ‘meaning’ is taken here not so much as scientific importance, that is, the contribution that Camper’s publications made to the progress of science, pure or applied – an importance they undoubtedly also had – but more in the sense of the pleasure, the entertainment provided to the readers of his 1 Encyclopédie, vol. xiv, 788: ‘Telle est aujourd’hui la variété & l’étendue des sciences, qu’il est nécessaire, pour en profiter agréablement, d’être en même temps homme de lettres. D’ailleurs les principes des sciences seroient rebutants, si les belles lettres ne leur prêtoient des charmes. Les véri- tés deviennent plus sensibles par la netteté du style, par les images riantes, & par les tours ingénieux sous lesquels on les présente à l’esprit’. 2 Van der Korst, Het rusteloze bestaan, 4. 154 bart ramakers articles. That pleasure or entertainment lay in more than just the communicated insights themselves: in the description of the (sometimes very practical) circumstances under which this process had taken place; of his confron- tation with the auctoritates, both old and contemporary, whom he joined or rebelled against; or of the motives that had guided him during his research. In eighteenth-century learned publications, the researcher himself moved into the foreground. He did not restrict himself to the logos of his scientific argumentation, but left ample space in his argument for ethos and pathos. Circum- stances, relations, and motives were explained extensively, creating a familiar atmosphere, which allowed the reader, as it were, to witness the progress of knowledge over the scientist’s shoulder. One is tempted to call Camper a populariser of science, but that sounds contradictory to the degree that science in the eighteenth century was, on the whole, already popular.3 Scientific curiosity, an interest in the most recent dis- coveries, belonged to the habit of the enlightened citizen, who, as an amateur who might or might not possess an academic education, sometimes liked to practice science himself. Not just the practice of science was popular, but also its destination and purpose. It aimed at a broader audience than the initiated exclusively, and it served, even in its pure form, a common good, which in the context of the Enlightenment in the Republic could also be purely religious: ‘The scientists of the time were men of society, taking an interest in every- thing that could be useful to the country in which they lived’.4 Hence little dif- ference was seen, let alone observed, between pure and applied science.5 It is more appropriate, therefore, to call Camper a public scientist, since in his so- called ‘practice of knowledge’,6 especially in its publicity element, he met science’s public nature and function more than others did, and he displayed great literary creativity in presenting his scientific ideas. He mobilised science in order to clarify issues, solve problems, and settle disputes of general interest. To successfully perform his public role, Camper did what the lemma Sci- ences in the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783), quoted above, expressly asked for: he provided the principles of science with the grace of the belles-lettres.7 The exercise and communication of science was a part of the ‘republic of letters’.8 A good scientist 3 Generally, see Lynn, Popular science. I also want to avoid the confusion with what Roy Porter calls ‘popularized medicine’. Porter, ‘Spreading medical enlightenment’, 215. On such popularisers and their amateur audience also see Rousseau, Enlightenment borders, 276. 4 Gunnarsson, ‘Introduction’, 6. 5 Gross, Harmon, & Reidy, Communicating science, 112. 6 For an overview of this ‘practice of knowledge’ in the eighteenth century, see Holenstein, Stein- ke, & Stuber, ‘Introduction’. 7 Gaukroger, Collapse of mechanism, 239. 8 Gaukroger, Collapse of mechanism, 232-240. Also see Brockliss, ‘Starting-out’. to be read tastefully and fruitfully 155 was by definition a good writer.9 This was certainly aided by choosing the vulgar tongue in which most scientific, general-interest, and spectatorial periodicals were written. Accordingly, Camper published most of his articles in Dutch. And in Dutch he wrote satirical plays and a number of contributions to spectatorial journals regarding topics that were exemplary of this genre.10 He has even been called a ‘columnist’.11 Publication behaviour This chapter is a first foray – and nothing more than that – into the pragmat- ics of scientific communication in Camper’s work. To this end, three cases are discussed. These concern his ideas on the origin and skin colour of black Africans, on symphysiotomy, and on the form and design of good shoes, re- spectively, as presented in five publications: three on symphysiotomy and one on each of the other two subjects.12 They fall into varying disciplines: anthro- pology and anatomy, orthopaedics (specifically podiatry), and obstetrics. The scientific-historical, and more specifically medical-historical aspects of those ideas, their content, creation, and theoretical and practical argumentation, have already to a greater or lesser extent been discussed. This is not true for the manner in which they were presented in written as well as in spoken form (the first case having been the subject of a public presentation that was sub- sequently published). First of all, there has been no scholarly attention for the nature and audience of the chosen channels of publication. In these and many other cases, those channels were neither periodicals of foreign scientific societies, like the Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society in London or the Mémoires of the Académie de Chirurgie in Paris, nor those of Dutch scientific societies, 9 Rousseau, Enlightenment borders, 289 (about Buffon); Pender, Rhetoric and medicine, 39. 10 Van der Korst, Het rusteloze bestaan, 44, 79-84.

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